If you’ve seen director Vivek Agnihotri’s Hate Story, starring Paoli Dam and Gulshan Devaiya, you are probably expecting bolder erotica, bigger thrill, shocking shades of grey. In those departments, and in most others, Vishal Pandya’s Hate Story 2 is lesser than its predecessor. The only place it matches up to its precursor is the calibre and impact of its hate figure. Shushant Singh is as effective, as loathsome as Gulshan Devaiya was, only Devaiya had a more cogent reason to be a cretin, and he played a character that was split into two. Shushant Singh plays a misogynistic creep with saffron shades. No explanation required.
The storyline is what it was. A wronged woman is out to destroy the powerful man who ruined her life and left her for dead.
Last time we were in Delhi. Now we are in Mumbai where lives Sonalika (Surveen Chawla), a sad, morose girl with a pallor that shouts Vitamin D deficiency. That could be because Mandar Mahatre (Shushant Singh), the man who keeps her in a flat for his pleasure only, doesn’t let her go out. Yet she goes, often, for her photography classes. And tours Mumbai with Akshay (Jay Bhanushali), taking photographs.
Mandar is married, feared, racing to the top of the political ladder. Police commissioners tend to his needs, and janata adores him. Touching him means triggering a riot.
We don’t really know how, or since when, but Sonalika is his sex slave. She’s petrified of him and stammers when he’s around. A chess board is always laid out in her apartment and the game, between Sonalika and Mandar, is ongoing. He likes to call her and make his moves -- E3 se F5. Sometimes it’s his pawns, sometimes knights. She’s not into this silly game. Not until she elopes with Akshay and is trying to find love. But then Mandar arrives with his men and life seems over. A watery grave for him, and a dusty one for her. One survives, one doesn’t. And revenge becomes the survivor’s raison d'etre.
In Hate Story, Paoli Dam’s character had to undergo training to be Delhi’s numero uno prostitute. She also had to use her smarts and training as a journalist to unravel and destroy her opponent.
Nothing of the sort here. Sonalika rises from a dead and turns into a killer machine despite the damage to her brain and life-threatening seizures.
She does, however, find an honest cop who helps her, Inspector Varghese (Siddharth Kher). And, eventually, the unlikeliest of collaborators. The twist is cool. And it makes sense.
I wish the rest of the movie did, too.
Hate Story 2’s story is the barest-minimum required for a revenge saga. It has none of the layers, substance of the original. And its characters are like chess pieces programmed to play single-line roles: bad man, bruised girl. He moves one square, she moves one square.
The only thing that holds our interest and attention in Hate Story 2 is Shushant Singh. His razor-sharp Mandar Mahatre is scary, compelling. His performance is as taut and precise as his demeanor. He made me tense. Shushant Singh inhabits Mandar Mahatre’s character with such joy and ease, that it’s a shame the writers didn’t given him more to play with.
Surveen Chawla is good, but always so sad. She too isn’t given much. She is not required to titilate. For that Sunny Leone is summoned who does her robotic-erotica with pink lipstick. And the man for whom her Sonalika is extracting revenge is laughable. Jay Bhanushali appears in two avatars, one of which glows. Every time he gives darshan, it’s impossible not to giggle.
There are two things for which I would recommend Hate Story 2: the naughty politics of the iconography around Mandar Mahatre thrilled me, as did Shushant Singh.
